By Michael Davis

Assistant Executive Director

Bridgton Historical Society

Howdy neighbor!

If you had chanced to be downtown last Monday evening around 8 o’clock, you would have seen a very curious sight. Under cover of mounting darkness, on a dark and stormy night with thunder rolling in the heavens and rain spitting icily down, two suspicious persons could be seen working around the Wales & Hamblen building; constructing a makeshift ramp from scrap timber, handing around jacks and tow-straps and very likely canvas bags with dollar bills painted on them, and right under the noses of curious passers-by, this duo pulled off perhaps the finest caper our town has seen in living memory. Later on, as the shadows lengthened, they could have been seen hauling up Methodist Hill a ponderous cargo, whose weighty bulk had first descended that very hill 126 years before. It was no less than a one-ton, cast iron fire safe, with silver dial and tumblers tricky enough to rival the finest vaults of old Norway Savings Bank. Its destination? The Bridgton Historical Society.

Now, I want to say at the start of this, that there are some opportunities you only get once. In the museum trade, which I really ought to call the preservation trade, when such an opportunity comes along you simply must take it. This was one such opportunity.

About a week before the great safe heist — as it later came to be known — it was brought to my attention from certain lovely volunteers of our organization that the good folks down at the Wales & Hamblen apartment building, formerly the Wales & Hamblen Hardware Store and Odd Fellow’s Hall, were about to start up some remodeling project in the lobby. Now, I’ve always had an interest in the ongoing use and renovations of W&H, and the Bridgton Historical Society actually has a set of plans from 2007 when the building was remodeled internally and its exterior repainted in its old style. During these renovations all those years ago, there was discovered down in the basement a great iron safe, curiously painted, which was hauled up and set on display right inside the building’s front window.

Growing up, I lost track of how many haircuts I got inside that building in the days when the Barber of Bridgton was quartered in the right-hand storefront, and every time I entered I would look with wonder and curiosity on the great safe in the corner, thinking how many thousands of dollars in old-time gold and silver once passed in and out of its great iron door, and further dreaming of an afternoon spent with a stethoscope, trying my hand at safe-cracking like the wild west outlaws on TV. More recently, however, I’d noticed that the safe had been moved from its customary location, and that a bank of mailboxes for the apartments upstairs had replaced it. The safe was now sequestered in a downstairs corridor, and around that time I began thinking of how fine a thing it would be to secure that safe, which I felt sure had considerable local history, for display in the Historical Society’s museum. Now all these years later, that opportunity finally came along, for in consequence of the ongoing remodeling the owners of Wales & Hamblen decided it was high time for their safe to find new owners, provided anyone was brave enough to attempt hauling it off. Antique safes often go that way; like grand pianos, if you want one, you will eventually be able to find a great deal secondhand, provided you’ll put in what’s necessary to move them. Let me tell you, what’s necessary turned out to be a whole awful lot, since in this case the safe weighed about one-ton U.S., or 2,000 pounds. But what matters the weight of about five adult black bears among friends, when the question of preserving local history is at stake? Nothing of course — hence a series of calls, e-mails, and meetings behind the scenes at the Bridgton Historical Society, and the dispatching of a crack retrieval team carefully assembled for the mission — my father and I. Many folks saw us do the deed, and some even offered to help; from the regulars at BHOP to the firemen on Gibbs Avenue, who helpfully offered dynamite to blast the door if we needed it. We didn’t, of course, but it’s the thought that matters and the laugh was greatly appreciated.

Here’s why all that effort matters. This safe was manufactured by the Barnes Safe & Lock Company of Pittsburg, Pa. (yes, it didn’t have the ‘H’ then). While the records of this company burned in 1912 and so we can’t say exactly when it was produced, the safe’s serial number 19415 helps us pin down a date range to the mid-1870s, which agrees with the most recent patent date on the dial, that of 1871. It originally was shipped to town for service in the Bridgton House hotel, back in the old grand, pre-fire days when it stood three stories with some 60 rooms and a bowling alley in the basement. This would mean it was originally purchased by Marshall Davis, longtime proprietor of the Bridgton House, and true to factory standard, the safe came new with the name “Bridgton House” printed in block gold leaf capitals above the door. With a seven-flanged hinge mechanism and one-inch pins, I am told this safe was one of the securest then manufactured in America, and that the Barnes Company found extensive business up and down the East Coast. In 1883, Marshall Davis died, and the Bridgton House and all its contents, safe included, were sold at auction to the veteran hotelier S.G. Southworth, who ran it for a few years in connection with a line of stage coaches to the Mount Pleasant House. In 1887, it is told that one Mr. Mason purchased the Bridgton House together with all the “furniture and other appurtenances,” and sometime after that it sold again to George B. Newcomb, under whom the next chapter in this safe’s history takes place in 1897.

As we find from The Bridgton News of April 2, 1897, Newcomb next sold this safe to the Bridgton chapter of the International Order of Odd Fellows, who moved it to their hall on the second floor of the Wales & Hamblen building and arranged for it to be redecorated with their name, motto, and a charming woodland scene courtesy of James Carroll Mead, son of local sign and fish painter John Mead Jr.

“Cumberland Lodge, I.O.O.F., has purchased of George B. Newcomb the safe formerly used at the Bridgton House, and placed it in position at their hall. J.C. Mead, with the aid of his ready brushes, has transformed it into an ornament to the Lodge room.”

Painted across the front, beneath a beautifully wrought mountain vista, are the initials “F.L.&T” representing the motto of Odd Fellowship; the triple-linked chain of Friendship, Love, and Truth.

Afterwards during the early 20th century, likely as Odd Fellows membership declined, I understand this safe was moved downstairs to be used by the Wales & Hamblen Company during the last days of their business, doing double duty for their bank statements together with the vital records of the lodge upstairs. In 1961, the building was condemned as uninhabitable, at which time the Odd Fellows disbanded and the safe was relegated to the dusty basement of the old hardware store, where it awaited demolition and the scrapyard. But glad to say, the hammer never fell. Always in Bridgton’s history there have been people willing to fight to save Wales & Hamblen, and so it lived on through the intervening decades as church reading room, laundromat, antique store, storage units, and now apartments, following a loving effort of repair and restoration by many hands which has succeeded in preserving the façade of this Bridgton icon and kept the names of its proprietors alive in public memory to the present day. It is now classed on the National Register of Historic Places, and I must here thank its current keepers, the Dionnes, for now ensuring that yet another piece of Wales & Hamblen’s history, and indeed our whole town’s history, will continue to be kept “safe” for Bridgton’s future residents to enjoy throughout the long years to come.

And for all our readers not satisfied with the photographs printed in this issue, please do stop by the Bridgton Historical Society’s museum on Gibbs Avenue to see it this summer, as this is the first time in 126 years it has been outside of Wales & Hamblen. Who knows, there may even be treasure waiting for you inside…

Till next time!